@Lemur
You don't have to choose one archetype from the book. Mixing and matching throughout your life is the best strategy, IMO

True. But also like any competency one gets better if they stay put (specialization). It has its pros/cons. I've been a 'Salary man' since I was 18. Its all I've known but it also has served me well. I like the idea of Businessman / Renaissance-man but have only dabbled in the latter while the former a good friend of mine from high school has stuck with and has unfortunately not found success yet.

I think, by far, the biggest risk of staying singularly in any particular quadrant too long is our fickle human minds simply get used to it. Then, by proxy, we forget there are other ways. How many failing serial entrepreneurs are there? How many salary men that continue with OMY, because once they quit they think they can never earn more money? How many working men who complain they can never get stable work? How many renaissance men repeatedly spending hours making soap to save $5 per year?

Look, it's good to know how to make soap by doing it once. It's good to know how to start a business, it's good to know how to work at salary man and save a bunch of money, etc. My point is, when we spend too much time in one realm, we tend to forget the other possibilities.

I think, by far, the biggest risk of staying singularly in any particular quadrant too long is our fickle human minds simply get used to it. Then, by proxy, we forget there are other ways. How many failing serial entrepreneurs are there? How many salary men that continue with OMY, because once they quit they think they can never earn more money? How many working men who complain they can never get stable work? How many renaissance men repeatedly spending hours making soap to save $5 per year?

Look, it's good to know how to make soap by doing it once. It's good to know how to start a business, it's good to know how to work at salary man and save a bunch of money, etc. My point is, when we spend too much time in one realm, we tend to forget the other possibilities.

True, but it is also important to recall that the main point Jacob was trying to get across with that graph was that the Renaissance Man is minimizing dependencies. However, one thing I am noticing looking at this graph again is that it doesn't directly address the issue, or common divide found here and on other closely related forums, of location dependency. Tying yourself to a particular latitude/longitude allows for the accumulation of local stocks/tools and greater development of social network, but leaves you shit out of luck if your locale is the loser in any given SHTF scenario.

So, in almost every FIRE community, everybody is seeking the semi-unicorn of the highly compensated on hourly basis, very flexible job you can do anywhere as bridge between Salary Man and Renaissance Man quadrants. In a weird way, this is almost evidence that some of us are now living in a post-capitalist world, because this sort of job, especially if done as contractor/consultant, is like unto a mini-business requiring virtually no capital investment. But, except maybe to the extent that robots are being operated at a distance, this sort of work can't possibly produce the basic stuff, like food, which humans need to live.

@7WB5
Right, I think you hit the nail on the head. Even in Renaissance Man quadrant there are still dependencies, they are just different in kind. Making my own clothes, I am dependent on sourcing materials (or growing my own cotton/ raising wool). Also it requires the correct tools, land to grow cotton/raise wool, and a space large enough for a loom. Not to mention the requisite time/effort in learning the skill.

That's not to say RM quadrant isn't the least dependent of all quadrants. Rather, experience and ability to switch between the quadrants, when it makes most sense to do so, makes one less dependent as a whole. This way, If I can't source or grow my own cotton, I can still pick up a temp job (working man quadrant) to raise the capital to purchase clothing from someone else. I think of this similar to investing, the ability and knowledge regarding diversification of asset classes allows one to weather any storm that stirs in the macroeconomic climate and/or personal circumstances.

This is inferred in the book though. Since ERE, in principle, has someone using salary man, working man, or business man quadrants to free energy to work on the final, most robust quadrant, Renaissance Man. Plus, using one or more of the other quadrants as a means to further RM in an ongoing fashion (ie why not sell/trade the extra clothing you make, if you are set up to do so and it fits in personal web-of-goals).

No!
What it means is that your plan; Salary Man-------(years)-------> Renaissance Man, is not the only way. You have something like 10 years expenses saved, no? If you're currently dissatisfied, spend some time in one of the other 3 quadrants.

I am the semi-unicorn consultant 7W5 referred to. It’s more of a cross between Salary Man and Business Man than Salary/Renaissance. I earn 3x what full-time employees make who are doing to same thing, all I had to do was give up “job security” and figure out what the margins were. Super-high hourly rate. Hotels and travel expenses paid for, with a per diem. No overhead, no fixed capital expenses, no inventory. Very efficient, not resilient. Business connections beget business connections. It’s a ruthless and relentless game. But so many doors are opening that were previously closed. I have put in 6 years and I do not enjoy the work outside of some social aspects and seeing the large sums move into my bank account. I can see myself putting in another 2-6 years but then I will be able to go anywhere, except live indefinitely in the most expensive places.

If you were to become a Business Man now, what would you do? Can you invent something? Produce a good? Manufacture? Identify an inefficiency in the market? Right now I merely provide a service, and it is asymmetrical- I get paid whether the client company succeeds or blows up. If you are going to make something you better be in love with what you are making, or have some vision and commitment to a process, because if you fail you make no money and perhaps lose money invested in the business. Hard to be an entrepreneur while perusing the options on OkCupid, better put the phone down and work 80 hours a week (unless you are developing the next goofy dating app).

Maybe it is not the worst thing to fail if nothing other than to learn from it. But even now I am impatient with “Well I failed but I learned.” I better damn well be learning if I am not earning, and the learning cannot be some disguised rationalization after the fact. Be rigorous and beware of magical thinking.

Key takeaways from the past few months:
1. The real world is shit for people without money
2. The money is where the people with money are
3. Graduate education likely leads to downpayment in money and no nice job anyway
4. The working world is usually a horrible place
5. Living simply and saving is the key to making the above as short as possible
6. Finding friends and partners takes deliberate and determined effort in none-college world
7. Showing up to job and doing good work while focusing on positives is best path forward; embrace the suck and all that

Maybe you could reflect on the past, reevaluate the experiences and lessons learned and adapt them to your present situation?

For those further along the path than me,when did you notice that your hard work accumulating was paying off?

A year or two after university when I had concrete savings percentages. From there it was basically confirmed, elementary. From there it was more blurry, not really noticing anything drastically different from a low networth, high savings to high networth, retired.

There's plenty of evidence on this board and elsewhere demonstrating that the opposite is true. More money or freedom isn't going to make you happier if you aren't happy now.

> "you don’t need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin. He’s broke, don’t do shit."

I agree w/ animal, they are fairly independent, depending on circumstances. One example of where they might be correlated is if you need some sum of money to achieve your means beyond subsistence and some leisure; for instance if your happiness, extended leisure is more like what Ben Krasnow does.

Personally I'm trying to reconcile my barebones lifestyle with my more expensive, potential hobbies. Ideally I'd have a cheap plot of land to build a lab and such but live in a van?

I went to the RV show last year to see if we could find anything that we could bear to live in. It was TERRIBLE. I spent my youth RVing with my parents and everything we could see now was cheap pressboard garbage even at the ~$130k level for a new RV. The class Bs were nice, admittedly, but they cost the same as a condo in most of the US.

Obviously you could buy used, but man was I disappointed in the cost:value on the ones I saw.

Yeah, I'm consistently amazed at the crap RVs available at retail. I highly suggest DIY or buy used, especially for ERE, barebones folks. I mean, I lived in a cargo van for two years (no toilet, shower, fridge, etc) and it wasn't really that bad, so long as you have a friend or two and a gym membership (and live near the coast of CA, LOL). But really, you can make something pretty nice pretty quickly and pretty cheap. One of the vlogs I follow (@technomadia) mentioned wanting to get a class B recently.. and the crap they were looking at was.. crap. AND EXPENSIVE. I think it's just that when your are at such a small scale (e.g. tiny house, class B RV), any single drawback is extremely amplified. I expect prices to fall as more competitors get into the "cheap living" market in the next decade+.

On the subject of RVs, retail RVs are incredibly overpriced. It's insane. So crazy that a guy I know can buy new 4x4 Sprinters, do only 40 hours of conversion work, and sell them for like $50-70k profit. Because a factory sprinter RV is $160k or whatever.

THF, if you're thinking about buying an RV, read the book "Vanabode" by Jason Odom. He's a little.... quirky, but he basically describes a very simple, ERE-style of van conversion and living. Read that to at least see and example that doing things on the simple end can be great for some folks.

To be honest, I don't know the actual problem anymore. Many things have been mentioned already (remote work, salary man, RV, ...).
I tried to ask a question about his motives and virtues, because I think that it is important to live&work in alignment with them.
I would need more information about the problem at hand in order to give a specific suggestion, because otherwise it would be just guessing.
With my last post I wanted to show that you (Fox) know already so much. You have gained so many experiences and lessons already, that I believe you could narrow down possible options by yourself. What would be the Top 5 options you have in mind?

THF, if you're thinking about buying an RV, read the book "Vanabode" by Jason Odom. He's a little.... quirky, but he basically describes a very simple, ERE-style of van conversion and living. Read that to at least see and example that doing things on the simple end can be great for some folks.

Darn it, I was hoping my library would have a copy......cheapest I've found is $25 on Amazon

I wouldn't recommend paying $25 for it. (Unless you're definitely about to design and van and are trying to decide how simple vs complex to do it)

THF - I don't think I'd call Odom's style cheapass. I'd just call it simple. (Some of his advice and behavior is weird and maybe on it's own could be seen as cheapass, but I believe it is just his own 'weird' more than anything)

Saw How To Train Your Dragon Hidden World and absolutely loved it!!! The entire trilogy is tear-worthy tbh. Another date down, but I try not to name the people since you statistically never see them again, even if it’s a good date. Hm.

In other news, I’ve figured out that humans have little bars for happiness. There’s one for:

Furthermore, have you read a little bit about Positive Psychology? Martin Seligman was the founder of this field and also runs a course on Coursera titled 'Positive Psychology Specialization Project: Design Your Life for Well-being'. Might be interesting!

Probably medium happy. I don't know about positive psychology. My system seems to be pretty basic. "Feeling sad or unfulfilled?" When was the last time you ate, slept, relaxed, had sex, felt love, did something new, worked on a project you liked, enjoyed time with friends, felt secure in your budget, etc.?